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to my mind, the strange thing is that there might be demand for 400 homes in what is a fairly isolated place, with few local amenities. It seems like the definition of a sink estate. If you sneeze while driving through Bloxham, you miss it. It bjust seems like a strange place to plonk 400 houses. Rather like Scipio building Italica across the river from Seville. One city flourished; the other fell into disuse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italica

"Because if this madness continues for another couple of years, there will be no Hallowed Green Belt left, will there?"

It won't, God willing, because before then the housing bubble will burst and suddenly the developers will lose their desire to be so helpful to those hard working families who want to get onto the housing ladder.

B, the sentisitivity of supply to falls in prices is a very new invention. From 1983 to 2004, the number of new builds in UK was always between 170,000 and 200,000, there is no particular correlation between that and house prices.

The sensitivity only kicked in between 2005 and 2008, when new construction crept up to 225,000 a year.

The previous noticeable low was 1982 (150,000) but this was not just because of recession/house price falls, this was part of the general downward trajectory as a result of the rise of Home-Owner-Ism as a primary political consideration in the 1990s.

Well, working as I do in the constuction industry, I definitely noticed that the last crashette in 2008 brought many sites to a halt, and left many houses and flats unsold, some of which remain unsold to this day, at least round here they do, so I am surprised that the effect didn't translate to less houses being built overall, although the sales figures might tell a different story.

However, a development in Oxfordshire is always bound to sell, catching some of the glow, as it does, from London's overheated market, unless we have an Irish-style crash....